Mercedes Lackey

A life in fantasy

Mercedes Ritchie Lackey, born June 24, 1950, in Chicago, is an American writer of fantasy novels and one of the most prolific science fiction and fantasy writers of all time. Her career grew out of the fan cultures, fanzines, filk circles, conventions, and paperback fantasy publishing of the late twentieth century, and it has continued across more than 140 books. In 2021, she was named the 38th Damon Knight Grand Master.

Lackey is best known for the many interlinked novels and trilogies set in Velgarth, especially in and around the country of Valdemar. The Valdemar books often bring human and non-human protagonists into contact across different cultures and social mores. Her other major setting is similar to Earth but includes hidden populations of elves, mages, vampires, and other mythical beings. The Bedlam’s Bard books follow a young man who can work magic through music; the SERRAted Edge books feature racecar-driving elves; and the Diana Tregarde thrillers center on a Wiccan fighting evil.

She has also written novels that rework well-known fairy tales in a mid-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century setting where magic is real but hidden from ordinary life. Those books take up ecology, social class, and gender roles. Her work has also moved toward television development: in 2021, Radar Pictures acquired the television rights to the Valdemar novels, with a first season planned around the Last Herald-Mage trilogy, though in 2023 Kit Williamson described the adaptation as being on hold.

What shaped her work

Lackey’s reading life began early. At about age 10 or 11, she picked up her father’s copy of James H. Schmitz’s Agent of Vega, then read Andre Norton’s The Beast Master and Lord of Thunder, followed by Norton’s other works. She wrote for herself without much direction until Purdue University, where she graduated in 1972. There, a professor who shared her interest in science fiction helped her analyze the books she loved and learn from them. Fan fiction, fanzines, and filk lyrics gave her more ways to practice before professional publication.

Her first sale was to Friends of Darkover, and she later sold a rewritten story to Fantasy Book Magazine. Writers around her mattered. Marion Zimmer Bradley included Lackey’s short stories in an anthology, and C. J. Cherryh helped her through 17 rewrites of Arrows. Other mentors and collaborators included Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, Piers Anthony, Elizabeth Wollheim, James Mallory, Roberta Gellis, Dave Freer, Eric Flint, and her husband, Larry Dixon, who illustrated later Valdemar volumes and is credited as co-author on many later works.

Lackey’s interests outside the page also fed the fiction. She and Dixon have worked in raptor rehabilitation, and afterwords to some of her books refer to rehabilitation and falconry. She has kept parrots, calling them her “feathered children,” and has enjoyed beadwork, costuming, needlework, and radar-reading during tornado season. Her books continue to draw readers because they combine speed, range, moral pressure, and affection for outsiders, all grounded in the habits of a writer who learned from fan communities and never stopped producing stories.